Internet Cat Video Festival

Summer is drawing to a close, so mark its passing with Andrea McGinty’s Life’s a Beach!!! at Beverly’s tomorrow night. And although the Rockaways won’t be in season for much longer, the rest of Queens is heating up. Witness the comedienne Adrienne Truscott taking off her pants to take on rape culture in Long Island City on Wednesday night. Thursday, thingNY’s apocalyptic opera opens at the Knockdown Center in Maspeth, along with the exhibition Surface Matters, though we recommend saving the performance for Sunday, when there’s less stuff happening. The borough’s New York Hall of Science is also hosting the World Maker Faire (which actually has programming all week). It seems like there’s virtually no reason to ever leave Queens. It does suggest, though, that art loving New Yorkers may soon need to invest in a car to get to all these places. For anyone in the market, we hear the 2010 Jeff Koons BMW art car doesn’t suck.

AFC’s Paddy Johnson is teaching a class! Do you want to write about art? Enroll, and she’ll teach you. [tumblr]

Apparently no fewer than 128 people completed Damien Hirst’s “spot challenge” back in January. 128. They’ll get their prints soon, but more importantly, what the hell, people? [The Art Newspaper]

Photographer Juozas Cernius, who’s taken his share of pretty pictures for this blog from around the world, is looking to fund a project documenting the work of aid groups in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. He’s raising the money through IndieGoGo, and then giving the proceeds back to aid organizations. It’s a good thing to do for the world, and maybe you should help him out. [London Free Press]

This week, AFC’s Paddy Johnson will be at the Toronto International Film Festival. In anticipation of TIFF, Indiewire have realised 25 films they are looking forward to. Are you excited about seeing Keira Knightley trying to do Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina justice? Us neither. We’re looking forward to The ABC’s of Death, comprised of short horror films by 26 directors. Each was assigned a letter of the alphabet and accompanying word, leaving it up to the director to come up with a short story of death. GNARLY. [Indiewire]

Anyone going to TIFF must watch the premiere of Reincarnated, an Andy Capper documentary made about Snoop Dogg embracing rastafarian culture/smoking lots of weed in Jamaica. Anyone not going must watch this trailer. [YouTube]

The Walker had an Internet Cat Video Festival and we were really excited. The “people’s choice” cat video winner was revealed last week, and now we’re disappointed. Existential feline Henri 2, Paw De Deux won out of the thousands of entries, that included Keyboard Cat and Nyan Cat. AFC’s Paddy Johnson has something to say about the unexpected result. [Today]

James Panero writes about how punk rock influenced Pussy Riot and Ai Weiwei. In a nutshell: “While at times misused within Western culture, … when employed against oppressive regimes [punk] can be potent.” [The Wall Street Journal]